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Comic-book publishers were scrambling to create new costumed crime fighters in the wake of Superman's instantaneous success in Action Comics #1 (June 1938). Since the wildly popular Errol Flynn movie The Adventures of Robin Hood was attracting long lines at the box office during that summer, the notion of pitting a contemporary bowman against villains armed with guns was too good for comics creators to ignore

At the advent of comics' Golden Age (1938–1954), readers were dazzled by the audacious exploits and flashy ensembles of the first wave of superheroes. Very quickly, however, the novelty of these men and women of steel became endangered from battles with generic gunmen and mouthy mobsters, menaces borrowed from the pages of newspapers of the day. Comic-book editors, writers, and artists were challenged to create supervillains against whom their heroes could maintain their mythic status.

For a period of about ten years, starting in the late 1970s, anime went through what can only be called a Golden Age in Japan. Television and movies were joined by the OVA (Original Video Animation) format, which offered advantages over television or film animation. Titles such as Mobile Suit Gundam,Dr. Slump,Macross, and Urusei Yatsura became multimedia hits, from comics to animation to merchandising. Studios were breaking away from traditional stories or taking them in different directions.

Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman—they're the heavy hitters, powerful enough to make People magazine's 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons list for 2003. Then there's what many would categorize as the B-list: Iron Man, Green Lantern, Thor, and Green Arrow, heroes popular among comics fans, but never quite crossing the line into the general public's consciousness. Let's not forget the more minor titans like the Scarlet Witch, Blue Beetle, Ant-Man, and Metamorpho, heroes only a mother (or a die-hard comics fan) could love, whose shots at stardom come and go.

Musician Johnny Domino is having a good morning in San Francisco, until an alien energy bolt strikes a trolley car, sending a chunk of metal into his head. After he recovers, he learns that he does not need to sleep, his eyes are permanently dilated (making light painful), and that he can telepathically hear other people's evil thoughts inside his own head. Using his aikido training, Domino garbs himself in a costume and prowls the city rooftops after dark as the Night Man, to stop the crimes he knows are going to happen.